


In Two Days

by LydiaBSlade



Series: Destination Unknown [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Angst, Come Eating, Everyone is 18 when the sad blowjob happens, First Time Blow Jobs, Hux is Not Nice, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Mental Health Issues, References to LiveJournal, Sad Blowjobs Ahoy, Slight BenPoe, Underage Drinking, benarmie
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-10
Updated: 2018-11-10
Packaged: 2019-08-21 11:01:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,213
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16575188
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LydiaBSlade/pseuds/LydiaBSlade
Summary: In two days, Hux leaves for basic training. Ben has something important to ask him.





	In Two Days

**Author's Note:**

> References to middle-school bullying, mental-health issues, general teen angst. Also Hux is kind of a dick and has problematic reactions to basically everything. Please let me know if you feel this was under-tagged or if I need to be more specific.
> 
> Many thanks to unicornsandbutane for reading this over!
> 
> For clarity: this is set in 2003, so Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell was still a thing. So was LiveJournal.

He’s outside, in the cool dark that smells like saltwater and cut grass, leaning against the porch fence. Inside, the party is still going on - he can hear the thumping music, raised voices. Shadows pass in front of the lit windows. 

In two days he leaves to start cadet basic training. 

Behind him, the front door opens and closes.  “Hey,” says Ben. “Hux?”

***

Hux has been acutely aware of Ben Solo, on the periphery of his life, since seventh grade, their first year together at a school for gifted kids on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. 

On the first day of seventh grade, Hux had arrived at school wearing the dress shirt and tie his father had insisted on, his slacks ironed into sharp creases. On his own initiative, Hux had completed the look with a briefcase rather than a backpack. A backpack would have wrinkled his starched shirt. 

His father dropped him off a block away from the school; Hux hadn’t wanted to be walked to school like a baby. From the car, he could see the other students streaming towards the front gate. No one else seemed to be wearing slacks, let alone a tie. No one else was carrying a briefcase. 

One older girl with bleached hair walked past the car wearing something that looked like a lacy silk nightgown. There were smears of dark makeup around her eyes. Hux peered at her more closely: she was wearing a pair of handcuffs around one wrist, like bangles. 

Next to him, his father muttered something disapproving. Apparently, this was not what he had expected gifted American students to look like. 

In class, no one commented on his clothes, although various pairs of eyes lingered curiously on the tie and briefcase. There were some muffled giggles. When he was asked to introduce himself to the class, the remnants of his British accent drew more whispers.

At the end of the day, having eaten lunch alone and spoken to no one, he was by his new locker, peering into it, trying to decide how to organize it. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw two older boys approaching. His shoulders tensed. He remained staring resolutely forward.

Their footsteps stopped behind him. “Is that a tie?” one of them asked, laughing.

“Are you fucking kidding me? He’s wearing a tie. And carrying a briefcase! Like a tiny businessman!”

Hux could feel his face getting hot. He remained frozen with his back to them, hoping they would move on.

“He’s so narrow! I bet he would fit in that locker!”

“Yeah! Hey, can you see if you can fit in that locker? Climb in!”

Hux turned to face them, closing the locker and bracing his back against the door. “No,” he said, carefully, gritting his teeth.

“Come on!” said one, a big, overfed-looking kid with shaggy blond hair. “We just want to see if you’ll fit.”

“No,” Hux said again, louder and more panicky, and then the kid was grabbing him, scooping him up, the other one opening the locker behind him, the metal walls of the locker bruising his hips. His head thunked painfully against the metal shelf as they shoved him backwards. His knees hit his nose. 

“He fits!” the blond kid said triumphantly. Hux peered up at them, feeling angry and crushed, before the other kid swung the locker door shut on him. It banged against his polished leather dress shoes.

“Let’s go,” said one of them from outside, and Hux sagged with relief. He waited for their footsteps to move off before he kicked the door open and began trying to extricate himself. 

Suddenly a new face appeared in front of his locker, an awkward, friendly-looking boy with shaggy dark hair and a big nose. Hux recognized him vaguely from a class earlier in the day. “Hey!” he said. “Need a hand?”

“No,” said Hux, feeling that he would never want to speak to another human being again ever in life. But he didn’t struggle when the dark-haired boy reached in to grab him by the wrist and pull him to his feet.

“I’m Ben,” said the boy. “I’m sorry about those assholes. I was watching and waiting for a good moment to headbutt them.”

“Well, you certainly took your time about it,” Hux snapped, angry and embarrassed and wanting very much to go home. He turned away, not wanting to register the look of startled hurt on the other boy’s face. 

***

After that, school improved slowly: Hux dispensed with the tie and briefcase, but continued to wear collared shirts exclusively and to iron sharp creases into his trousers. He joined the debate team. He went out for track. 

Ben seemed to want to be friends, but he made Hux nervous: he was so openly needy, like a puppy. It brought out Hux’s sharp elbows and made him want to hurt someone. 

And, too, as time went on and Ben joined the swim team and grew taller and broader - but still with the shaggy hair and the unnervingly soft mouth and expressive eyes - looking at him unraveled something in Hux, made Hux think about things that were not part of his Plan, things that were not compatible with the military career he had been dreaming about since childhood.

Mostly they went their separate ways. Hux got his naturalization papers in the ninth grade and continued to work towards his goal of becoming the sort of candidate that West Point could not possibly turn down. He became the captain of the track team. He was the terror of his opponents on the debate team. He considered running for student council, but ultimately dismissed the idea as unworthy of his time. Hux knew that he wasn’t cut out for popularity contests. The seat he had considered running for went instead to a boy whose campaign speech consisted of breakdancing in front of the podium and then promising to have more appetizing vending machines installed. 

Meanwhile, from what Hux could see, Ben was coming apart, first bit by bit and then all at once. He remained on the swim team, but barely; the coach was constantly frustrated by his failure to live up to his potential (Hux happened to overhear this, as he walked very slowly past the teachers’ lounge once).

Ben seemed to be spending most of his time with the theater kids, but when he was cast in a small part in “Romeo and Juliet,” he missed the first rehearsal and was immediately replaced. He pierced his ears and began wearing dark eyeliner, haphazardly applied. For a six-month period in eleventh grade, he insisted that everyone call him “Kylo” - his LiveJournal username, something that Hux knew about because Ben had insisted on giving him the URL. Hux never commented on Ben’s LiveJournal posts and, when questioned closely by Ben, would not admit to having read them. 

At some point during the “Kylo” phase, Ben also began telling everyone who would listen that he was bisexual - something that Hux spitefully dismissed as yet another cry for attention until the day that he walked past Ben’s locker (a shortcut, he told himself) and found Ben hunching his big shoulders and folding himself downwards like a question mark, kissing the boy who had been cast as Romeo in the play. Romeo was short and dark-haired and muscular and pretty, built like a gymnast - nothing like Hux, who had been lifting weights with grim determination since eighth grade, but remained undeniably scrawny nonetheless. Hux’s stomach cramped with something that he told himself was disgust as he walked away as quickly as possible.

Ben and Romeo, as Hux continued to derisively think of him, lasted until the end of the semester - long enough to create a minor sensation by going to junior prom together. Or so Hux heard; he skipped the party, telling himself it didn’t interest him. He continued to be resolutely uninterested in the post-prom gossip about Ben and his boyfriend, about the loud fights they’d been having, and finally about the news that Romeo had dumped Ben for the kid who played Mercutio. Unlike Ben, Mercutio showed up to rehearsals. And apparently things had escalated from there.

Hux only found himself willing to admit to some level of concern after Ben disappeared. Post-breakup, he vanished, just before finals - there were rumors, about some sort of breakdown, hospitalization, a clinic upstate. His LiveJournal remained un-updated for weeks, then months. Its gothic red-and-black graphics remained unchanged, always there for Hux to disapprove of whenever he reloaded the page. Hux was busy that summer with an internship, at the investment bank where his father worked - a last-ditch attempt to keep him out of the military - but the weeks seemed to crawl by regardless. 

Then, as senior year began with a clatter of lockers and new shoes and the bewildering bureaucratic crush of college applications, Ben miraculously reappeared - somehow still on track to graduate, somehow having made up the missed finals and missed work - but thinner and tired and more crushed-looking. He still looked wistfully at Hux in the hallway at times, but they barely spoke. Ben hardly ever seemed to be alone - a protective phalanx of theater girls seemed to escort him everywhere he went. Hux was focused elsewhere that fall, anyway, single-mindedly thrashing his way through West Point’s thicket of admissions requirements. 

***

And now it was the night after graduation and Hux still wasn’t sure how he had come to be at this house party in Long Island, at somebody’s parents’ beach house, the grey ocean in June still too frigid for swimming. When Hux thinks to himself, _two days, two days to basic training_ , he feels as if he’s on an airplane speeding towards an unknown destination. In two days someone will throw open the emergency exit and order him to jump out, into the bright light and the rush of freezing air and the nothingness under his feet.

Beside him in the dark, Ben shifts awkwardly against the porch fence, his dim profile a smudge of messy hair and nose. He smells faintly of beer. “So you’re almost out of here, huh?” he says, looking away from Hux, out towards the road. 

“Yeah,” says Hux. “Two more days.”

“Are you worried?” Ben asks. “About, like, going to Iraq or something?”

“No,” says Hux immediately. Then, more honestly, “I’m not worried about Iraq. It’ll probably be over before I get there anyway. I’m worried about making it through basic training.”

“You’ll be fine,” says Ben. Then, after a moment, “Your dad must be really proud of you.”

Hux glances at Ben. He’s still looking away. “Not really,” says Hux. “He wanted me to go to Harvard.”

“Yeah, well,” says Ben, “at least you’re going somewhere.”

Hux doesn’t respond. He knows that Ben is not almost out of here - he’s staying at home for the summer, then maybe taking some classes at City College, Hux has heard. Hux grits his teeth. He would rather go to Iraq three times over than spend another summer mostly alone in his father’s apartment. 

The breeze picks up, ocean-smelling, making Hux shiver. 

Ben turns towards him abruptly. “Hux,” he says, his white face and dark eyes briefly illuminated by the flash of headlights from a passing car. He grabs Hux’s wrist, his big hand hot around it. “I’ve been wanting to ask you - “

“What?” says Hux, halfway to panic, halfway to something else that he usually tries not to think about as hard as he can. Ben’s fingers are still tight around Hux’s wrist - pull away towards the thumb, Hux thinks automatically, but he doesn’t move. His whole body feels tense with anxiety and anticipation, as if he’s kneeling at the starting line of a race, waiting for the gun. 

Ben loosens his grip, strokes the sensitive inside of Hux’s wrist with his warm thumb. He’s leaning closer now, looking searchingly at Hux with those big eyes, his partly-open mouth a soft shadow in the dim light. Hux can smell the alcohol on his breath. “Can I - “

 _Fuck it_ , thinks Hux, the barriers that he usually puts up to keep himself from thinking about what he really wants falling like dominoes. He jerks forward, closing the distance between them. Ben makes a little startled noise into his mouth, then wraps his arms tightly around Hux, bringing their bodies together from chest to thigh. 

_Fuck_ , thinks Hux again. Ben’s mouth is hot and tastes of beer, opening sloppily against Hux’s, his tongue pressing hesitantly past Hux’s lips. All of a sudden Hux is overwhelmingly, achingly hard, sliding his hands into the warmth underneath Ben’s leather jacket, feeling the muscles of Ben’s back shift under his hands as Ben rocks against him with a groan. The railing of the porch fence bites into his back as Ben presses him eagerly against it. The bulge in Ben’s jeans is hot against his thigh. 

There’s a noise behind them and Hux jerks away guiltily, twisting his head to look around. “No one’s there,” says Ben, running his tongue experimentally up the side of Hux’s neck, making him shiver in the cool air. “But can we - can we go somewhere else?”

 _No_ , thinks Hux. _This is where I say no and leave, because this is a terrible idea_. “Yeah,” he says instead, hating the breathless sound of his own voice. “Where?”

“There’s a tool shed,” says Ben hopefully. “The lock is broken.” He grins sheepishly, shrugging his shoulders. 

“Sounds like you had this all planned out,” Hux says drily, unable to keep himself from smiling back, something joyful fizzing up inside him in spite of the chorus of _no, don’t do this, don’t throw everything away_ that’s still echoing in his head. 

“Just hoping,” says Ben, still grinning, grabbing Hux’s hand as he turns to walk towards the shed. “I’ve seen you looking at me. For years.”

“Don’t flatter yourself,” says Hux automatically, but he’s following Ben, walking awkwardly because he’s still very hard in his jeans. 

The tool shed door creaks open. It’s pitch-black inside and smells of paint, and Hux grimaces as something spiderwebby brushes past his face. He’s still scrubbing at his face with his shirtsleeve when Ben pushes the door shut behind them and shoves Hux against it with his hips. 

“Oh my god,” Ben gasps, rocking his hard cock against Hux’s through their jeans, mouthing his way towards Hux’s ear in the dark. Hux sucks in a breath at the feeling of Ben’s hot tongue and teeth moving up the underside of his jaw, around the sensitive curve of his ear. “I’ve been wanting to do this for so long.” 

Ben’s hands are large and warm under his shirt now, feeling his ribcage, sliding down inside the waistband of his boxers to stroke his hipbones and squeeze his ass. Hux feels overwhelmed, dizzy, out of control. 

“Fuck - Hux - I want to - “ Ben drops suddenly to his knees, groping for Hux’s zipper in the dark. “Can I - I want to suck your cock.”

Hux squeezes his eyes shut. His face is hot. “Fuck,” he says, his hands already going for his fly, fumbling with the button. “Yes. Fuck. I want that.”

“Yeah,” Ben breathes, one hand inside Hux’s jeans now, the other pressing down on his hip, pinning him in place. Hux hisses as Ben squeezes his cock hard through his thin cotton boxers. “Fuck, I wish I could see you.” He’s breathing hotly on Hux now, mouthing at the head of his cock through his shorts. Hux writhes against the door, trying to press up into that mouth. 

Ben yanks the waistband of Hux’s boxers down under his balls, licking and nuzzling at them and then taking them into his mouth. The stubble on his cheeks rasps at the inside of Hux’s thighs. Hux gasps for air, clutching at the wall, clutching at Ben’s hair, his throbbing cock sliding over Ben’s face. He knows he isn’t going to last long. Ben turns his head to lick a hot stripe up the underside of Hux’s cock, squeezing the shaft with a slippery hand before he sucks the head into his mouth. 

“Mmm,” Ben groans, as though he loves the taste. He slides his mouth down to meet his hand and sucks hard - and that’s it, Hux is done, whining and gasping and coming hard into Ben’s mouth before he can even think to warn him. Ben chokes a little, swallows, starts to laugh. “I guess you liked that,” says Ben. “Warn a guy, will you?”

“Shut up,” says Hux, blushing furiously in the dark and trying to tuck himself back into his trousers. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay. It was hot,” says Ben, standing up and grabbing Hux’s hand, guiding it to his erection, still trapped in his jeans. “Help me out here?”

“What do you want?” Hux asks, his heart pounding. He squeezes Ben’s cock through his jeans, wonders what it would taste like. 

“Ngh,” says Ben, leaning heavily against the wall, breathing hard. “Just - just your hand is fine - here.” He unzips his jeans, the metallic sound loud in the quiet room. Then he brings Hux’s hand up to his mouth, licks wetly at his palm and between his fingers. Hux shivers at the feeling. “Just like that - “ Ben pulls Hux’s hand back to his cock, inside his briefs, wrapping his hand hard around Hux’s and thrusting into it. “Ah - fuck!” In a few moments, he’s coming too, doubled over and gasping, his come spurting hot between Hux’s fingers. 

“Oh,” says Ben, “oh wow.” Hux holds his wet hand out to one side awkwardly, not sure what to do. Ben gropes for him in the dark. “Mmm, let me clean that up for you.”

“Wait, seriously?” says Hux, but his cock jerks in his jeans as Ben takes his hand and carefully licks his own come off it. “Isn’t that gross?”

“Nah,” says Ben, still breathing hard. “Cleaner this way.”

“If you say so,” says Hux dubiously. “I can’t believe we just did that.”

“Yeah?” says Ben, bringing his face close to Hux’s. Hux jerks away from the bleach smell of his breath. “Why not? It was fun.”

“I am not kissing you after that,” says Hux stiffly, fumbling for the door knob. “I have to go.”

“Why? Where are you going? I thought we were all staying here tonight.”

“Yeah, I don’t know,” says Hux. He’s starting to feel panicky again, trapped. He yanks the door open. In the dim light he can see the anxiety on Ben’s still-flushed face. Also, too, his wet, swollen lips. “I think I’m going to find a cab.”

“Hux, hey. Don’t be like that,” Ben says, reaching for him, folding around him from behind. “There’s no cabs out here anyway.” For a moment Hux wants more than anything to relax into his warmth. Then he shrugs him off. 

“I have to go,” says Hux again, shrilly, his heart beating faster, a sick feeling in his stomach. “I’ll figure something out.” He walks towards the road, almost running, willing himself not to look back. 

Behind him, he hears Ben’s footsteps crunch on the gravel of the driveway, then halt. As Hux reaches the main road, he faintly hears the front door slam.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! I know the end is depressing and I really don’t want to leave them there. I have many more headcanons about Cadet Hux to share, and I also really want to create more opportunities for both of them to make bad decisions and emotionally scar each other, so please let me know if you’d like to see more!


End file.
